An Internal Affairs Investigator was murdered and his brother, Donovan Goldwyn, was framed. Now Donovan is desperate to prove his innocence. And the one person who can do that is the woman who saved him from a deadly hurricane—Beth Kennedy. From the moment their fates intertwined, passion consumed him. He wants her in his arms. More, he wants her by his side in his darkest moments.

Beth Kennedy may not know everything about Donovan, but she can’t deny what she feels for him. It’s her love for him that pushes her to do whatever she has to do to help him get justice, including putting herself in a criminal’s crosshairs.

When a tip reveals the killer's location, they travel to California, but then an earthquake of catastrophic proportions separates them. As aftershocks roll the land, Beth and Donovan have to endure dangerous conditions while trying to find their way back to one another. Will they reunite and find the killer, or will they lose everything?

Excerpt:

Glass rained down on her when bullets sliced through the windows. She ducked her head even lower. Pieces of glass slid off her head to the ground where shards circled her feet like a ring of posies. A few of the glass puzzle pieces from the window had collected on her lap. She brushed them off and pressed her hands firmly against the passenger door. More glass fell on her when the truck’s window behind her erupted.

After a moment, Buck directed his bullets toward the Volkswagen. Beth turned her head toward Donovan. Bullet holes snaked across the small hood and hit the ground beside him. One bullet hit the hubcap of the car directly behind him and ricocheted. She couldn’t see where the bullet went until he flinched to the side and turned his head to the Volkswagen’s door where a metal cavity was level to his shoulder.

Shit. The bullet must’ve slipped right past him with centimeters to spare.

She didn’t even have time to gasp before the bullets came back to her side. Instead of puncturing the metal frame, they skidded along the ground. The moment she realized Buck was shooting under the cars to hit her, the tire she hid behind blew. She squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to make herself smaller by pressing her body into the SUV. The Morse code of bullets hitting metal started up again. She could’ve sworn she felt the SUV shaking with the continuous beat of bullets slamming into it, except the shaking was below her feet. It started gentle but as soon as she noticed, it became violent.

Earthquake!

She fell backward and struggled to get back up. Her body bounced up and down and rolled from side to side simultaneously. A light came crashing down from the ceiling and slammed into the concrete floor with such power it exploded into a trillion stars. Glass shot out in all directions like the Big Bang. Beth screamed and covered her face with her hands as tiny pieces of glass bit the skin on her arms.

She fought onto her hands and knees and hugged the tire to keep from falling over again. The intensity of the tremors grew. The concrete below her feet didn’t feel solid anymore. It felt alive, as if two gigantic gophers burrowed through the earth. The truck behind her slid with the vicious shock waves and bumped into her, pushing her roughly into the tire. She let out a cry of panic.

“Beth, get under the car!”

She heard Donovan yelling over the roar of the quake and shimmed underneath the SUV. When she was under the vehicle, she lifted her head to look for Donovan. The shaking suddenly increased, as if Mother Nature had her hands on the asphalt that smothered her creation and wanted to rip it off the ground. Chunks of concrete tumbled down. Donovan raised his arms to shield himself, and that was the last she saw of him before a wall of rubble came down between them. She screamed his name, but the sound of the garage collapsing swallowed her voice.

A section of the concrete above fell at a slant and slammed into the ground, giving way to a car that slid sideways down its length and rammed into the SUV. She flattened her body to the floor, her eyes shut tight while she prayed for the earthquake to end and for Donovan to be okay.

A moment later, as if a higher power had answered her prayer, the shaking quieted and all was still. She opened her eyes to a cloud of gray dust. It clogged her lungs and settled at the back of her throat with each panicky breath she took.

Pushing aside small rocks, she slithered out and came face to face with a silver Honda pressed against the rear of the SUV. Choosing her footing carefully, she stepped onto the concrete slab, inched past the Honda, and ducked beneath the ramp, hoping it wouldn’t fall and crush her. She checked quickly for Buck but didn’t see him before facing the dam of concrete in front of her.